Author and historian James Bamford stepped up and answered THREAT LEVEL's call. He's responding to the NSA's newly-declassified rebuttal of a portion of his work by whipping out an NSA document of his own. It's a full-blown classified document smack-down!
Yesterday, we reported on a 2002 NSA history, declassified last month, which challenges Bamford's report in Body of Secrets that NSA suffered a major compromise when it left top secret crypto gear and material behind as the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam in 1975. The NSA report says most of the gear was vintage. We suggested Bamford release his source material, and offered to referee the dispute. Today, he responds:
In response to your query, the material in Body of Secrets came from a five page document entitled "DON Vi' 600". It was written by Gary Bright who was the U.S. Army officer who developed the COMSEC accounting system for the South Vietnamese armed forces. I obtained it from the NSA in 2000. It is understandable that NSA, in its 50th Anniversary celebration publications, would want to downplay its failures. NSA officials, however, told me it was one of the worse security breaches in the agency's history -- loosing over 700 highly secret NSA crypto machines to the North Vietnamese -- who no doubt shared, bartered or sold them to the Russians and possibly the Chinese. As the NSA document below makes clear, the fact that the crypto equipment "was considered obsolete by U.S. standards. This did not mean that the systems were any less secure than more modern U.S. used materials."
Bamford drops docs after the jump.
Don Vi' 600 was the national cryptographic depot and maintenance facility for the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) Army, Navy, and Air Force. From 1966 through 1973, their facility was located adjacent to the U.S. Forces "Hotel 3" helicopter landing area at Tan Son Nhut Air Base. In 1973, the facility was moved to the area previously occupied by the Air Force Command Operations Center adjacent to the Armed Forces Courier Service (ARFCOS) vault.
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The COMSEC accounting system for RVN forces was developed in 1968 by three U.S. Signal Corps Warrant Officers, CWO F. Portillo, CWO Figerora, and CWO Bright.
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After the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam, support was provided by a three-man team assigned to the MAC-V and located in the same compound as previously housing the full blown MAC-V effort. This team consisted of two civilians and one senior army warrant officer. The warrant officer from 1972-74 was CW4 F. Portillo. From 1974-final days it was CW4 M. Morgan. Logistic support for equipment, repair parts, and even office supplies was provided through Threater [sic] COMSEC Logistic Support Center-Pacific (TCLSC-PAC) located at Fort Kamehameha, Hawaii. Funds for the project were provided from the National Security Agency, to Dept. of Defense, to Dept. of Army, to Army Communications Command, to 5th Signal Command, to the TCLSC-PAC. The Chief, Inventory Control Center (ICC), CWO Bright, was the project manager from 1973 until the project terminated.
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In 1970, a decision was made to provide the RVN forces with limited quantities of FM Secure Voice equipment (NESTOR, TSEC/KY-8). Only operator maintenance was provided and strict warnings not to open the equipment were given. It is felt though that the equipment was opened and examined by the repair personnel. There is not any hard proof of this, however, knowing the competence and curiosity of the repair persons, it is felt that they probably did examine the interior of the machines.
In late 1974 and early 1975, the military situation in South Vietnam did not look good. It was decided to slowly retrograde some of the equipments used by the RVN forces back to CONUS or Hawaii. Delicate political moves were made to keep from offending the RVN general staff and a slow movement was begun. Then in January-February, it was determined that the situation was becoming critical and a stepped up effort was begun to remove material more rapidly to Don Vi' 600 for movement to CONUS. In the last three weeks of the existence of the Republic of Vietnam, some 700 pieces of ADONIS and NESTOR equipment had been gathered and prepared for shipment to CONUS. Unfortunately, none of this equipment was shipped or destroyed. None of the facility or its contents were destroyed. It was estimated that enough keying material and codes were abandoned for 12 months full operation of the on-line, off-line, and low-level codes in country.
The equipment, other than NESTOR, that was provided for use by the Vietnamese was considered obsolete by U.S. standards. This did not mean that the systems were any less secure than more modern U.S. used materials. Machine off-line systems used were the ADONIS. TSEC/KL-7 with ancillary HL-1B and the M-209 non-electrical mechanical system. On-line teletype systems were PYTHON using the HW-10 and HW-19 provided through the USAF. There were varying degrees of one-time pad, voice authentication and low-level operations codes. One DIANA one-time pad system was used by the ARVN general staff for privacy messages.
